


ignobility

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Saints Row
Genre: Character is Injured while Protecting Another, F/M, Gore, Gunshot Wounds, Hurt/Comfort, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-02-29 20:32:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18785680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: Those were good times. Back then, Johnny still believed that there was no way in hell the boss was even capable of dying.





	ignobility

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FireEye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireEye/gifts).



“The fuck did you go and do something as stupid as that for?” Johnny said and he wasn’t ever going to acknowledge just how uncool he sounded, his voice pitched to a tone it hadn’t hit since before puberty. Okay, maybe not that bad, but it was close enough to it that the old boss lady was looking at him like he’d grown a second head, which hey. Weirder things have happened to him. After that shit with Zinyak, Johnny didn’t presume that was a limit to the amount of weird that the world could throw his way. Oh, wait. The whole fucking universe. Because Stilwater and Steelport weren’t enough, no. No, now aliens were out to get him, too.

And even in the midst of all that weird-ass bullshit, the boss lady was throwing herself at bolts of laser fire like Johnny couldn’t have handled it all on his own by, he didn’t know, shooting the bastards and diving out of the way instead.

“I’ve heard this is what heroes do,” she said, coughing, and he had to admit, it was maybe a good thing she’d been hit with laser fire at the very least. It was a lot cleaner than the bullets and blood he was used to. He coulda done without the scent of cooked meat in the air though. And the char that curled the hole in her body suit away from her body and allowed Johnny to see just how fucked she was. “That was some straight up _Star Wars_ shit. I’m fucking awesome.”

Johnny would never be as grateful for the carefully cultivated inscrutability of his features—and maybe the mirror-obscure surface of his sunglasses—as he was at this moment because there was no way in hell he was going to admit that the adrenaline coursing through his body was terror, plain and simple, and it was a good goddamned thing she couldn’t see it on his face. “You’re gonna be fucking dead if you don’t shut your mouth and let me figure this out.”

Johnny missed the comfort of Zinyak’s simulation. At least there all that happened was Genki Bowl-certified mayhem and cheap death, fun for the whole family and fun especially for him. Sure, it was cool as hell to fight real aliens in the real world where there were actual consequences, but when your best friend in the entire damned galaxy started throwing themselves into the line of fire for you, that’s when things got real in ways Johnny didn’t like.

Laughing, she pressed her hand against his and he couldn’t even be sure she was doing it on purpose. There was a haphazard, unconscious quality to it. Another weird thing to add to the weird shit pile. But there wasn’t a damned thing on her face to suggest it was meaningful. Just the usual bits and pieces of anatomy that were supposed to be there: sharp tongue, wicked mouth, sparkling, mischievous eyes. Despite the fact that she could very well shuffle off this mortal coil if Johnny didn’t get it together and save her ass, she was beautiful.

What a load of bullshit. He had no business thinking that right now.

“What’s there to figure out?” she asked. “I’ve been shot and it hurts like a bitch and you’re just about the best looking thing I’ve seen in a long time and I’m gonna focus on that until backup comes or I bleed out.”

The best looking thing she’d seen. Bull. Shit.

Johnny rolled his eyes, glad he wasn’t predisposed to blushing because there was a suspicious warmth rising in his cheeks that he didn’t like. “Backup’s coming.” Backup was coming if it could get through the hoard of unhappy aliens she and Johnny had just shot up. Meantime, Johnny had to figure out what to do with a space injury. From space. Real life alien space injury. Jesus Christ. She was right. This was straight up _Star Wars_ , but it wasn’t awesome. _Star Trek_ was better anyway. “The fuck do you even do about blaster wounds anyway?”

“Dunno,” she said, hazy and compliant. “Every other time I got shot I just—” She made a noise that might have been a vague attempt at dubstep and then her hands spread wide, sketching the shape of an explosion in the air. But she didn’t need to explain what she meant. When they killed other guys, it didn’t really seem like actual people dying. More like dumb-ass video game pixels blowing pixel-ridden guts and gore all over the place. It was cool as hell. This? This was not cool as hell. “It didn’t really hurt in the simulation. Bet there’s something on the ship that could help.”

“Yeah, well. It’d be great if we could even get to the ship,” he pointed out, waspish and needling. He was beginning to sound like Shaundi, except Shaundi usually sounded way more angry and way less useless than Johnny felt right now.

This was fine. This would be fine. And after it was fine and Johnny had laid waste to the entire galaxy over this slight to prove it, he and she were gonna have a talk about this. A talk and something else. Maybe a fist fight. Maybe a fuck. Could go either way at this point. Johnny was game for either anyway.

Then her eyelids drooped and that just wasn’t gonna work for him. Nope. No way. Fist fights and fucks off the table until further notice. He might yell at her instead. “Unless you want me to slap you awake, you’re gonna keep your eyes open for me, okay?”

When did he turn into the kind of guy who worried like this? It wasn’t chill at all. And deeply inconvenient to his image. They’d talked a lot since his return to the world of reality, but none of those talks covered this.

“Okay,” she answered. And to her credit, she did listen. Her eyes brightened and sharpened just enough that his heart unclenched slightly.

“You do it again and die on me, I’m gonna put on your grave that you were taken out by the ugliest, stupidest motherfucker I’ve ever seen. Embarrassing is what it is. And none of the cool tombstones we agreed on either.” They’d talked once about what they wanted their legacy to be when they were high and maudlin. She’d confided in him that she wanted hers to say she’d gotten taken out by a lion with a cannon attached to it. Here lies ‘The Boss,’ mauled to death by Simba’s Cyborg Cousin. “I’m not gonna install a laser light show on shit for you.”

Those were good times. Back then, Johnny still believed that there was no way in hell the boss was even capable of dying.

This was not a good time. This was the opposite of it. More like one of those days when you take the wrong thing and go on a bad trip. Not that Johnny knew anything about that. He only did quality shit, never showed a single bit of bad sense in his life.

She coughed again and made another grab for his hand. “Hey, Johnny?” she asked, and to her credit, she did sound a little stronger, a little bit less like he was losing her piece by piece to the stupidest mistake any person could make for another. “It’s gonna be okay, yeah? You’re not gonna have to lie on my tombstone just to get retribution against me. It’s cool. We’re cool. Shaundi’s coming and we’ll get back to the ship and get me patched up. No harm, no foul.”

“No harm—?!” Johnny wasn’t usually one to scoff, but that was ridiculous. There was very clear and obvious harm done, not only to her, but to Johnny’s sensibilities and those were the hardest things in the universe to rattle.

He was just about to chew her out when he heard gunshots—blessedly real gunshots, not this pew-pew bullshit like what caught the boss in the stomach—and shouts that were very Shaundi-like and therefore appropriately terrifying.

It wasn’t relief he felt, not at all. Just grim pleasure that someone was able to take retribution for him when he was busy uselessly holding the boss’s hand for her. It was easy to imagine alien blood and guts flying, Shaundi’s aim precise and perfect as she led her team to them. He didn’t even have to see her to know it was only a matter of moments now. That should have made him feel better; he should have been able to chill.

“See,” she said, disrupting Johnny’s dreams of violence. He couldn’t say he minded, not when she was smiling at him like she was. “Also, I think I’m gonna pass out now, so maybe don’t freak, huh? It’s gonna be okay.”

Telling him to not freak out was probably not the best way to go about asking him to calm down, because his first instinct—usually yelling or shooting something—had him pressing his mouth against hers, his hand coming up to cradle the back of her head while the same thought flared in quick, alarm-like bursts in his mind. _Don’t die don’t die don’t die. Not after everything we’ve been through._ But he didn’t say it, that was the important thing. He could maybe get through this so long as he didn’t. Instead his lips parted hers and he had to take this much credit back from her, she was responding to him and not passing out just yet.

A small, broken moan built in the back of his throat, an embarrassing piece of shit little thing that might as well have given away everything.

She was gonna mock him to hell and back when she wasn’t busy making time with death.

And he was just gonna have to ignore it and throw back at her the fact that she almost died. For him. Throw it right back in her face. Because that was pointless. He didn’t need to be saved. Not when he’d have to lose her in the process.

He went through that shit once. Never again. Never. Again.

Never.

And she sure as hell should have known that, needs to know that it matters, that her dying would be a betrayal of the highest order. One he couldn’t forgive.

For now, all he could do was let her know through action and hope she understood, hope that this would make her fight harder than she was already fighting. Nothing should’ve been able to take her down and certainly not a single bolt of weapon fire from a stain on the ground where an alien formerly stood. No way, no how.

 _I’ll never forgive you,_ he thought, desperate, mentally demanding that she understood.

When Johnny finally pulled away, she was smiling up at him, still with him, a glint in her eyes that wasn’t just the hazy glaze of her death haunting her. Good. That was what he wanted to see.

“Next time I catch you getting your romance on, you can save yourselves, Boss,” Shaundi shouted and that was exactly what he wanted to hear and maybe what she wanted to hear, too, if the laugh indicated anything. “God, that’s sick. You’re practically bleeding out right where I can see you.” There was no blood, but Johnny wasn’t about to argue the finer details, not when Shaundi was already issuing orders, her team dropping bags’ worth of medical equipment and a skilled medic or two at the boss’s feet. “And now this.”

Johnny was maybe relieved.

Even if it did mean he’d been caught being emotionally compromised a little bit, he was glad and maybe one day he’d be able to admit it. Right now, he just had to remind himself of that fact instead of snapping at Shaundi. Not least of all because he was the one who’d end up dead if he did, biggest badass in the galaxy or not. Shaundi was just plain scarier than the rest of them these days, all the more so because he remembered her for the laid-back stoner she once was.

He could maybe admit one thing at least.

“Thanks, Shaundi.” He cleared his throat. “Appreciate it.”

She waved his appreciation off and tossed him a gun. “Appreciate it by helping me kill some asshole aliens. They’ll take care of her.”

It was telling that there was any question in his mind about what he should do. Boss got him all tied up into knots. He probably needed to take a look at that. Glancing back at her, she rolled her eyes at him through the throng of medics helping her. “You heard her,” she said, nodding lightly toward Shaundi. “Go kill some asshole aliens for me.”

He grinned, the worry lifting a bit. Yeah, everything would be just fine. He was worrying for nothing. “You got it,” he said. And then made good on that promise.

He made very, very good on that promise.

Back at the ship, the boss whole and healthy and smiling mischievously at him from the doorframe of her berth, he made good on another promise, one that started with a kiss and ended someplace else altogether.

As long as she didn’t get herself nearly killed again, he thought he could forgive her just this once.


End file.
